I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
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How To Keep Facebook From Promoting '2 Girls, 1 Cup' To Your Family And Friends Under Your Name

Facebook users, you may not have realized it at the time, but by ‘liking’ any particular Page on the social network, you volunteered to act as a digital billboard for that Page’s ads.

My colleague Anthony Wing Kosner takes Facebook to town for “promoting stories you’ve never seen to all of your friends.” Kosner’s post was inspired by Craig Condon, a user who noticed that Facebook lets Pages that you have liked tell your friends about “Related Posts” on your behalf, even if you’ve never interacted with those posts. So if I liked a band, for example, that band could run an ad in my friends’ news feeds saying “Kashmir Hill likes Explosions in the Sky. They are playing in your town on such and such a date. You should buy a ticket!” In the more salacious example provided by Condon, he liked the magazine “Vice,” which led to an article about the scandalous video “2 Girls, 1 Cup” (Google it if you dare) being promoted underneath the claim that he liked Vice, despite the fact that he had never interacted with that particular article.

Condon argues that the label “Related Post” isn’t prominent enough, and instead gives the impression that he’s promoting the article. He also complains that there’s no way to see which ads have been run this way, nor to remove them from one’s feed.

“My friends & family might think I like inappropriate content, or information I don’t agree with – it can damage relationships,” Condon writes. “In fact, I’m only familiar with this issue because a friend asked if I liked ‘penis shaped waffles.’”

For those that love breakfasts that aren’t well-balanced, but are well-endowed?

Regardless, I asked Facebook how users can prevent this from happening. There’s a fix, though it means you have to completely hide your Likes from your friends…

This particular advertising feature, which is similar to but distinct from ‘Sponsored Stories’ — which just promotes things you’ve actually liked, such as sex lube — has been around “for months,” according to Facebook. There’s no “don’t show advertising around the things I like” button. That’s how Facebook is making money after all. In order to keep stories like this from showing up under things you’ve liked, you have to change your privacy settings to keep people from being able to see the things you’ve liked.

So if I don’t want these bands to be able to run ads targeted at my friends in their news feeds, I need to either unlike them or change my privacy settings so that only I see these likes or only the subset of Facebook users I want seeing ads see these likes:

If Condon doesn’t want Vice promoting weird articles in his feed, he needs to either unlike Vice, or change his privacy settings for who can see that he likes Vice. So users have to decide what they hate more: being conscripted into advertising campaigns or not being able to broadcast their carefully (or not so carefully) curated lists of stuff they like.

“These posts from Pages include social context from people’s friends who like the Page and respect all existing privacy settings,” says Facebook in a statement. “For example, if a person chooses to limit who can see the Pages they like, then only the people they choose to share with will see those likes on the person’s Timeline, in News Feed or anywhere else on Facebook.”

You might want to take this opportunity to review everything you’ve liked on Facebook, since by liking them you’ve given them the right to target ads and activism at your friends with your implied endorsement. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t offer a way to review which ads have been run for your account, so there’s no way for you to know how the Pages you’ve liked are using the space, unless you get feedback from friends… Which you probably won’t get unless you start promoting articles about penis-shaped waffles.

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Does Forbes endorse www.gofundme.com ? How can they verify if the person that says I’m a cousin of so in so and he was in an accident and needs money. Please give. This is a scammers heaven. And they have this website as a sponsor.

Well for starters Kelly, you could politely ask the person to identify themselves instead of sending rude and threatening emails. Secondly, if you actually had any connection to this family at all, you would know how the cousin in question is related to the family. Maybe you should learn to do research on the internet before you jump to conclusions. Thanks.

So if you hide your likes, that means you won’t show up in graph search, as well? I think that Facebook wants people to want to show up in searches, but the profligacy with which likes are used (like-abuse in my parlance) will make users more careful about what they like overall. It’s a very delicate balancing act that I think FB should do more to help users manage—even if it is against its immediate revenue interests. Generosity trumps all!

Well, quite. Facebook is canted towards being generous with your data. Which you have given to it, in exchange for whatever value you believe Facebook provides to you.

This feels like a social rather than a technological solution, in some ways. If your friends are likely to take seriously what Facebook decides to say about you, the difficult but effective solution is to change how Facebook works. The easy but less effective solution is to change your Facebook behavior or settings, in the knowledge that the system will trend towards minimising the effect of those changes where they conflict with Facebook’s goals. The easy and effective solution is probably to change your friends.

I think it’s going to be a big challenge for Facebook…. if users are actually aware of the fact that this is how their Likes are used. If enough articles are written saying “Don’t Like Anything” and users internalize that to wipe out their profiles, Facebook’s Search product is going to lose much of its appeal. Curious to see how the company handles the conflict between search richness and advertising dollars.

I smell another potential class action lawsuit here, similar to the Sponsored Stories lawsuit for misapproriation of names and photos, which Facebook recently settled for $20 million. I don’t know enough about the Pages ads to know if users image are being used, but a creative lawyer will find a way to state a cause of action for violation of users privacy sufficient to get past the motion to dismiss stage and force Facebook to think about a negotiated settlement. In addition to the Sponsored Stories case, this was what happened to the ill-fated “Beacon” advertising program which also resulted in a class action suit. Facebook ultimately agreed to abandon the program and pay $9.5 million as part of the terms of settlement. On the other hand, maybe buried somewhere in the latest round of changes to Facebooks privacy policy we all consented to the new Pages program and we will just have to live with Facebook’s latest effort to turn our “likes” into a saleable commodity. I think we should start a #penisshapedwaffles hastag on Twitter as a way to bring attention to this new program because, as you astutely note “who doesn’t” like those waffles.